During the first months of the project, the team critically reviewed the concepts of public goods and ecosystem services and, based on state of the art thinking, literature reviews and research, decided to use the holistic Social-Ecological-Systems (SES) framework to explore the full complexity of the factors and drivers enabling and limiting the joint delivery of economic, social and environmental outcomes in rural areas.
Following the review of concepts, we started a work stream on mapping the inter-linkages between farming and forestry management practices, different intensities of management and the provision of PG/ESS at EU level. The mapping work included firstly the creation of new agricultural crop and forestry maps at EU level. For agriculture, the work involved the geospatial presentation of the Farm Structure Survey data from 2010 provided by Eurostat for the first time. In addition, a novel approach was used to map the intensity of agricultural management. This was followed by the identification of proxy indicators and associated datasets for selected ESBOs. Lastly, an analysis of the geospatial patterns and trends emerging from the different maps created was carried out.
In parallel, we carried out an assessment of the socio-political, economic and institutional drivers which enable or inhibit the provision of the environmental and social benefits by agriculture and forestry. As a central plank of the project, PEGASUS teams in ten countries carried out 34 ‘broad and shallow’ case studies in different contexts using a participatory action-orientated research approach.
Finally, the team brought all strands of work together to develop a series of tools and recommendations for policy and for practice. We developed a toolkit for practitioners providing guidance and useful tips to stakeholders wishing to involve in a collective initiative to deliver more PG/ESS from agriculture and/or forestry. A mapping add-on to the toolkit was also developed helping local projects to better understand and benchmark the state of the provision of environmental and social benefits in their region. With respect to policy, PEGASUS formulated a series of concrete recommendations highlighting the importance of providing support to and encouraging a variety of actors to cooperate to enable joined up action across a territory or along a supply chain. Increased funding for collaborative/cooperative action as well as for advice, knowledge-sharing and facilitation; designing and implementing a mix of well-targeted, flexible and coherent measures; and making a greater use of private funding are all important recommendations identified by the project as being effective levers of change. It is to be hoped that these considerations will get the attention they deserve in the proposed reform of the CAP post-2020 in particular.
